Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

I am really hoping someone is going to correct me on this post. I have been studying Odesk lately, and been putting together a bullet proof financial situation for Purpose Inc., as we start to expand at a good steady pace.

There is a massive upside to hiring contractors on odesk, but at a certain size, you can no longer manage them yourself, you need to bring on other managers.

The problem we are running into on Odesk is a bit of a security hole.

Hopefully by publishing this, and making it public, either someone is going to immediately point out a flaw in what I am saying, or Odesk will be pressured into putting in some controls that will handle this.

Let’s say you have ramped up to where you have 8 or 10 Odesk contractors busily working away for you or your company. You decide that there is just no way you can manage them all yourself, so it is time to bring on a manager to work under you.

You have a few options.

1. You have the manager set up their own Odesk account, and hire, fire and manage the contractors in this managers account. The downside to this, is what happens to the contractor if they run up a $10,000 payroll bill for the week, and you the owner of the company don’t pay. The manager is then on the hook for the money. I think the assumed position is that if Odesk can’t get the money from you, then Odesk is just going to have to pay themselves, and will never get you. If you are a real company as we are, Odesk would simply ask us for the money, and we would pay them. The manager you hire, who is making $30k a year, will probably not be comfortable, running up a $10k per week payroll debt.

2. The other option is that you give your login info to your manager and they hire, fire and pay, from within your Odesk account. There is a huge downside to this which I did not think of until last week. What if your manager decides for whatever reason on their own, that they deserve more money. They can then take a friend or family member and hire them. Then they can pay that person say, $1,000 per hour. The person can then do real work for 40 hours that week. At the end of the week, they are then rightfully and legally owed $40,000. Even if you fired the manager, as far as I can tell, you would still be legally responsible to pay the $40,000 to their niece.

What am I missing here?

If I am correct, then there is a very simple fix Odesk can make to this.

1. They could offer more options on what rights you give each user. For instance I could approve my hiring manager to hire anyone they wanted, up to a total of 10 people, and that each one could be paid no more than 45 hours per week, at $20 per hour.

2. The account could simply have a limit set, that if the payroll owed goes over $5k, then the entire account shuts down until the owner personally logs on, and approves a higher weekly spend for the week.

There are a bunch of ways Odesk could set this up.

One hack that we did figure out, handles things up to a certain point of expansion and then will break down.

American Express currently offers free insurance on employee cards against theft. I called them and their claims adjuster told me that this covers employees and independent contractors. Bottom line, from what I understand, you need a written employee purchase approval system, you have 75 days after the fraud to report it, and you must fire or get rid of the employee. If you do all of those things, Amex says they will cover up to $100k in losses.

Since we only have extremely honest people working with us, the above should be more than sufficient.

I still with Odesk simply just gave us more controls on spending limits and responsibilities.

Tuesday 8:00 PM – Must have invitation to get in or security will stop you.
Full Information Here.

Poker Tournament on Wednesday sold out.

We just got 10 more seats available.

Read the rest here, then click the link below to sign up.

Guests may come and hang out and drink for free.

We just opened the sign up.

It is limited to 20 30 people.

The signup page is here:

We also can have 40 guests who will be drinking on me.

While not literally on me, I will make sure no one pays but me 🙂

go here to sign up.

The 2014 Pubcon party list is here including the poker tournament.

First off, the party to go to is the Purpose Inc. Link Building Poker Tournament on Wednesday night, which will be taking place just before the Internet Marketing Ninjas Penguins and Pandas fundraising party for the World Wildlife Foundation.

The poker tourney starts at 8:00 and the Penguins and Penguins party starts at 9:00.

It was fascinating as I just cruised around the blogs about Pubcon 2012, the only things I found were a few people announcing their speaking this year, and a bunch of people pitching the promo code so they could make their affiliate rip. Jim Boykin put up a cool contest on Facebook where you could win a free trip.

As the years go by, and we all become more successful, blogging has kind of gone by the wayside for most of us. I have great memories of Shoemoney with his party like a rockstar contest, and Chris Hooley’s rolling hard in his Little Rascals video.

We will be keeping the party pumping hard with our 6th annual Purpose Inc Link Builders Poker Tournament.

I first had this event so all 3,000 people had a place to come and hang out, whether you are connected or not. It is the biggest and most anticipated part of Pubcon. We will open up entries here in just a few days.

The tourney will be open to all Pubcon attendees and anyone making money with the internet. No pros allowed.

Texas Holdem.

Sponsors this year are Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Link Research Tools.

Info on the Advanced SEO NDA EMD discussion at dk’s penthouse at the Mirage – Details Here

A few more seats opened up at the Poker Tourney on Wed, also guests can drink for free alongside the players.

Subject – Late night chiropractic fix in the parking lot… {strange experience}

I had a weird experience last night, in the parking lot of the hotel I am staying at.

Let me give you the background:

Last weekend, I went to a mastermind party thing at Jonathan Budd’s mansion… and,
when there was keg that needed to be moved downstairs, guess who volunteered?

ME! (stupidly)

Those things weigh a TON.

It completely screwed up my back… and I’ve been in pain for the past 5 days.

So then yesterday, a friend messaged me about another mastermind happening next
week, that was stricty ‘invite only.’

You can’t just ‘buy’ your way into this one… you have to be doing decent numbers in your
business (like half a mill to 10 mill a year), and, you have to sign an NDA.

It’s somewhere around 3k to go hang out for 3 days on the beach… guys like Frank Kern
are going to it, about 25 all up (send me a message on Facebook if you’re interested in coming).

So I decide to go.

The guy hosting (DK) happens to be a chiropractor… so when I have him on the phone, and
I’m doing my ‘interview’ to see if I get in, I mention my back problems.

He says, if I’m in for the mastermind, he’ll swing by on the way to see his girlfriend, and fix my back.

So of course, I say yes.

Keep in mind, in a few weeks I’m hosting my event AddTheNitrous.com, and I don’t want to be
up on stage barely able to stand.

So there we are… 9pm at night, in a deserted car park.

He swings in, we shake hands, and he pulls out one of those chiropractor beds right next to his car.

He asks me to lay down, on my stomach.

He starts feeling around at the base of my spine… and starts telling me how to joints are out
of whack, etc etc.

Without a whole lot of warning, he pushed down on my back with some serious force.

I feel my back crack…

He does it a few more times.

More cracks.

Then I stand up… miraculously… the pain is pretty much gone.

It’s an awesome feeling – and DK just became my favorite guy.

You see, I’m not a pro when it comes to fixing backs.

I didn’t have a clue what to do to fix my own back… I was thinking I’d just have to put up with the pain.

If you paid me to fix yours (if it ever got sore)- you wouldn’t get much of a result.

Even if I offered to do it for 1/10 the price of what DK charges (he said 497 / hour) you’d still be getting
a bad deal.

But when you’re dealing with a pro… they’re able to come in… and within 5 mins can diagnose the problem,
push a few pressure points, and good as new.

That is the difference between a pro and an amateur.

Now, here’s where this applies to marketing.

I see newbies come online all he time… they message me on facebook.

I ignore most, because I just don’t have time anymore…

Mostly, they want the result (big bucks), but they want to get a ‘bargain’ on the price they pay
for their advice.

When I tell them what I charge hourly (now 997) they balk.

“What!!  I can’t afford that!” they whine…

But after having been doing this for 4 years… and crossing the 7 figure mark
2 days back, I’ll tell you this:

Smart people, do NOT buy knowledge by the pound.  They go for quality over
quantity.  Every time.

They have no hesitation in paying someone with the right knowledge and experience
a grand or more for their time… because, they know how much time and hassle
having that knowledge will save them, instead of paying for it through trial and error.

A good portion of people on my list are smart marketers.

So far, around 1300 of you have invested 10 bucks in ‘The IM Revolution Handook.’

But, over 80,000 others have not…

(of course- a good 25,000 of those don’t count, since they’re inactive subscribers…
but still)

Contained in those 65 pages, is everything I did to scale my business to a million
dollar company in the span of 13 months.

The 3 years prior to that, I was paying the bill for some very expensive trial and error lessons.

So it’s your call…

You can let me save you 3 years of your life (for 10 bucks!), OR, find out these lessons the
hard way:

link

It’s your call.

Talk soon,

Matt

I hate writing posts like this, but unfortunately the is the second time this week, I need to use my blog to get good customer service.

By the way, I am willing to pay for good customer service, just please help me out.

I am a huge Mac fanboy. Fricken will die for Apple.

I own something like 6 Mac computers, 3 ipads, ipods and god knows what else.

All of us in the internet biz have hundreds of usernames and passwords.

I currently use Diigo for my bookmarks, and 1Password for my passwords.

Up till this week it has been a rock star program.

For some reason this week the Diigo short cuts started disapearing off of Firefox.

At around the same time, 1Password stopped being able to detect what page I am on.

I can double click on 1Password and find the password still, but it will not autofill.

Business has been expanding monstrously fast lately, and my production speed is through the roof.

Not being able to use the 1Password program as I usually do has brought my work speed down like 30 percent.

I emailed Agile Bits about this, I tweeted politely to them, and they did respond with how to try to improve it.

The problem is that their suggestion has not worked. I quickly tried it and emailed back stating the details,

painstakingly long emails with every detail described. It is now 48 hours later, and still it is unresolved.

I uninstalled 1Password, uninstalled firefox, updated all versions, removed all extensions in firefox, and still it does not work after a clean re-install.

Please 1Password figure something out for me quickly, or I am going to go look and find the alternatives. Fix this fast, and I will post how awsome you are here. The world wants to know what is going to happen next! LOL

Update! 2 days later they have it fixed.

It took one of their programmers, and then me spending 10 minutes following their advice.

Companies like this with an excellent but discounted product are going to have troubles like this.

If you really want the first class, super productive users, to use your product, I highly recommend that golden button in the corner for white glove treatment of high value players. I would have been happy to spend $100 to get that done in 15 minutes in the first place.

The below was sent to me at my chiropractic office. They got me on every level, even my vanity to treat a model visiting from Italy. Obviously at the end when they ask about charges because they want to pay in advance is the give away, but before that they even almost had me. Read the email and see if you can see what tipped me off before the finance part. My answer of what it was below in red. Clue, the incongruity between the job they said they had, and what they said about me. See if you can spot it.

“Greetings from Sydney!!

My name is Roberto Biancini I live and work as a massage therapist here in Sydney, I am originally from italy, I am 45yrs old. I have been doing massage since 1991. I do deep relaxation massage in which the muscles relax without pain. I also do energy massage that helps people feel great when I am done. I am also certified to do pregnancy massage. I have lots of happy clients here in Sydney.

I have been looking for a Chiropractor for over a week now till i met an old friend yesterday that referred you to me, so i decided to contact you to know if you will be able give my client some Chiropractic sessions.. My client’s name is Ms Christine Serhan, A model here in Italy who has been having episodes of low back pain and has lasted for a week now…She will be coming to the U.S in 3 weeks time for a modeling job and will be residing in your Area temporarily until the necessary arrangement for her job has been made before she leaves.

She will be needing 1hr Chiropractic session per day, 2 Sessions per week for 6 weeks. Ms Serhan, asked me to come with her to America but i told her i would not be able to go with her as i have a course i will be going for in a week time and also because i do not know much about Chiropractic sessions, so i promised to help her get a good Chiropractor in your Area.

Pls tell me a little more about your self, how long have you been a Chiropractor? Would you be able to provide her with the sessions from the 10th of next Month to the 25th of October, 2 Sessions per week for 6 weeks. I need you to get back to me with the amount you charge per session and also let me know if she can pay you with a Certified check drawn from a US bank?

You can view some of Ms Serhan Pictures from the link below:

http://www.modelmayhem.com/portfolio/2656390/viewall#/28436511

Till I read from you remain blessed.

Roberto Biancini
Wentworth Avenue
Sydney NSW 2000, Australia”

The tip off?

1 HR Chiropractic sessions. Chiropractors don’t bill in sessions, they bill in visits. Of course the “Till I read from you remain blessed” is classic Nigerian style.

Time to go back to the next installment of the info product, “Rip off Americans by studying their professions and vernacular advanced”. Can you imagine the emails they send out to their list? LOL

The kids have been using a 10 year old Dell computer full of viruses that show a Barbie ad every few minutes. 🙂 Either Go Mattel! or Go some spammy affiliate marketer who knows how to target kids! LOL Of course I can’t be too critical as whoever wrote it is probably a friend of mine. Of course, using a computer like this for the kids sends the wrong message, like using a PC instead of a Mac!

Anyway, I want the kids to learn to be Mac friendly, and I want them to learn how to program from an early age. The world of the PC is not the place I want them to get started. I also don’t want them to get lost in mindless games, where you can have fun spending your whole life, yet never accomplish anything but complete the quest for the princess of Zara’s brassiere ringlet or some crap. I know because I have wasted years of my life playing mindless games. I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand they are hella fun, but on the other hand, I know a lot of very unhealthy, both mentally and physically people who wasted huge parts of their lives as gamers, and somehow mistakenly take pride in their accomplishments online. Bottom line, if it didn’t make a bunch of money, it was entertainment, but not worth a crap.

I also didn’t want to buy a brand new mac computer for a couple of lower end school age kids, as I am sure this computer is going to get trashed.

I went to ebay and found a 5 year old macbook for $300 bucks. The thing came looking almost brand new, with the OS reinstalled and the disk wiped clean.

I also don’t want them cruising the internet looking at random things. I am all for this when they hit 13 or so, and have some good values built in, but the next thing you know you will have a 4 year old watching a Nazi propaganda video, and thinking they should learn it, and coming after their Jewboy almost step dad. (me).

I then googled firefox extensions for whitelisting sites. What I really want is a plugin that only allows them to look at sites I have pre-approved, instead of the more common, we block porn. In my opinion people looking at pictures of naked people is not nearly as harmful as people watching videos about racism, or hate. In fact, I am not too keen on them watching tons of marketing of junk products that have no long term value.

I found a firefox extension called Zoodles. That is what I am testing now. It has a free version, and you can do a paid upgrade. They were not too in your face about the paid upgrade, and they sell it to you before you log the kids in. It does not allow your kids out of the site easily to the rest of the internet. It is a browser of kid safe, pre-approved sites. Occasionally you can click on a link which tries to take you out of Zoodles land, and the browser just kicks you back in.

The downside is that the kid just needs to be able to read well enough to click an x, type leave and they can leave the site.

Update – After we used it a bit, there are sites the kids can play on easily, and others that don’t work within the system.

It seems like a perfect place to start for kids in the 4 to 7 age group. It has customization for different age levels.

Was just doing taxes. (This is our San Diego earthquake story)

My wife walked down to the lower level, and I felt the house give a little roll.

I yelled to her, “hey, we are having an earthquake”.

I immediately thought of one of my silly things, which is to watch water slosh during earthquakes.

So before it even stopped shaking, I grabbed the pool key and yelled, let’s go see the pool!

As I got out the door, I noticed a little wind, and as we were running said,

“oops, the wind will cover up any ripple waves.”

When we got to the pool it was a different story, the whole pool, about half an olympic size one, was sloshing back and forth,

like a drunk, stumbling, carrying an overfilled beer across the bar, that sloshes out the side.

We stood and watched for about 3 minutes, and it slowly subsided, but never stopped.

Our neighbors just moved to California, and I met them for the first time.

She asked “Does this happen all the time?”

We said, nope, you were just lucky.